Our story so far:
God created the world. It was a pretty world, with lights and water and grass and most importantly, gooseberry bushes. Then God, being wise as well as full of wisdom, created all sorts of animals and birds and fishes to cover the earth and fill the sky and swim in the sea. Then God, more out of boredom than wisdom, created Man, and just because he understood how frustrated a decent red-blooded male could become with only chickens and cattle for company, God created Woman.
What happened next wasn't Woman's fault. It wasn't Man's fault. To some extent, it was the Snake's fault, but really, it was the fault of all three of them combined, for when the trio sat down for a bowl of fruit salad, God got mad and kicked them all out into the desert.
It was to become a very familiar desert. The descendants of Man and Woman wandered in that desert for a very long time, and since they had nothing better to do than make sandcastles and sand-angels and sand-Great-Crocodiles, they spent a lot of their time making up a whole bunch of nifty laws that none of them really intended to follow anyway. Most of the laws were useless, telling the people not to eat pigs and such, which was fine since there were only scorpions around anyway, or telling them not to sleep with animals, which was also fine since there were both men and women around so they didn't get that horny anyway.
The reason they didn't get horny a lot was obvious. They had sex a lot. This was because the very first thing God told Man and Woman was to be fruitful and multiply. Okay, because they were such a murderous bunch (who wouldn't be after spending forty years in a desert?), but because they were all such crotchety people, they spent more time dividing their population through various maimings, slaying, and massacring, but they spent enough time multiplying to make up for it.
Eventually, they left the desert and settled in a kingdom that was only 95% sand and rock. They lived happily for a while, getting invaded by their neighbours only about 95% of the time. The reasons for the multiple invasions were numerous. As we already know, they were a grouchy bunch of people, these Israelites, and so they quite frequently got right up their neighbour’s noses. Also, God had a bit of a gambling problem, but as he went into DGA (Divine Gamblers Anonymous), that isn't an issue anymore and we won't dwell on it.
Things started going really well when the Israelites got a king. That is to say, things started going really well for everyone but the Israelites. Their kingdom split in half because eight out of ten tribes preferred Colgate to Crest, and this made it much easier for the much larger kingdoms around Israel to saunter in and cart off the population to captivity. In fact, it was during one of the longer periods of captivity that God realised he really couldn't play poker and should really seek professional help. For any of you who have had to deal with any sort of psychiatric help, it might be reassuring to know that God got highly overcharged, but as it was a gambling problem he was dealing with, the waste of money didn't really matter.
But I digress. The Israelites were in Babylon. God was broke, after the gambling debts and psychiatrist bills added up. He declared bankruptcy, and because God's financial success ordained the fate of Israel, his chosen people, Israel was soon swept away by the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans.
It is important to remember that just before God went off for treatment, he promised his people that one day, a saviour would come. One day. Someday. Soon. He would come. All they had to do was wait.
And now, back to our story.